The People and the Dao: New Studies in Chinese Religions in Honour of Daniel L. Overmyer (review)

Daniel Overmyer was the son of missionaries in China, where he grew up and developed the interest in late imperial popular sects that became his specialty. He taught at the University of British Columbia for a quarter century, inspiring many students (p. 23), some of whom are contributors to this volume and pay tribute to his inspiration in the opening paragraphs of their articles. Overmyer’s wide-ranging publications on Chinese folk religions were characterized by a depiction of them on their own terms. He rejected European-based models for understanding Chinese popular religious phenomena and foregrounded the religious expression of the common people and not that of the gentry class, as previous scholars had done (pp. 27–28). The studies in this volume are all done in an Overmyerian spirit, deeply increasing international understanding of Chinese popular religion around east Asia from the Ming to the late twentieth century.

Part 1, dedicated to popular sects and religious movements, is the most faithful to the volume’s title. The first study, by Hubert Seiwert, interprets the element of rational choice in popular religious movements of the Ming and Qing. These movements were suspicious to the establishment, which passed legislation against them and sometimes actively persecuted them (p. 41). The reason why their memberships continued to expand, Seiwert argues, was the “rational choice theory of religion,” that is, that people believe they gain either “mundane” or “religious” rewards and avoid punishment in the long run by adhering to a particular faith (p. 43). Numerous small sectarian movements offered salvation at lower cost to the common people than, say, the Buddhist lay communities that were popular with the middle class. Nevertheless, there was a change in the social composition of these sects during the period in question, with more and more members of the middle class joining (pp. 47–51). Seiwert’s main example of such a sect is the Patriarch Luo movement, which was associated with popular rebellions, Maitreya Buddha, millenarianism, and messianic teachings. Patriarch Luo promised his followers prosperity in a coming catastrophe.

On a similar note is Shin-yi Chao’s case study on the worship of Zhenwu by popular cults in the Ming and Qing. Zhenwu, the Perfected Warrior, was an orthodox Daoist deity who was popular among Chinese commoners everywhere at that time (p. 63). Incorporating Zhenwu into sectarian belief systems required “rewriting his hagiography in order to create a connection between him and . . . the Eternal Mother,” which was “the product of a collective effort within the sects,” which were often considered heretical (p. 64). These sects believed that the Eternal Mother sent Buddhas and patriarchs down to earth to save mankind, and Zhenwu was appropriated as one of them in the pantheons of many (pp. 67–68). The sects transmitted their teachings via “precious volumes” (baojuan), which promulgated piety and were thought to have magical powers. Zhenwu appeared in one in 1523, along with the Eternal Mother as the central figure (pp. 68–70). Chao analyzes baojuan in which Zhenwu appears in various ways, always as a subordinate to the Eternal Mother, who was the sects’ central deity.

Next, Christian Joachim brings Chinese popular religion into the twentieth century with his study of popular Confucianism in sectarian lay groups in postwar Taiwan. He argues that these groups’ interpretations of Confucianism “provide evidence of the pervasive influence of Confucian morality in Chinese popular religion” and that “sectarian lay groups are among the few institutions that still serve as carriers of Confucian teachings in Chinese societies” (p. 83). The main sect that Joachim studies is Yiguan Dao, whose membership grew rapidly in Taiwan after the 1970s, even though it was not legalized until 1987 (p. 88). At this point, many intellectuals interested in preserving Chinese culture began to join and produced writings derived from...